


A Fine Line

by queen_scribbles



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 18:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14624936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_scribbles/pseuds/queen_scribbles
Summary: For @pillarspromptsweekly 35: Od Nua. Turned into Ederity, and I’m not sorry at all :D





	A Fine Line

**Author's Note:**

> For @pillarspromptsweekly 35: Od Nua. Turned into Ederity, and I’m not sorry at all :D

 

“Y’know, Tavi when you asked if I wanted to come visit _you_ this time, this is not how I figured it would go,” Edér complained teasingly as he ducked under tattered spiderwebs.

“Wasn’t how I was plannin’ for it to go,” Tavi said with a laugh. “But tremors under my main fuckin’ keep can’t exactly be ignored, can they?”

“And us being here is just a happy coincidence?” Charity piped up, switching the torch she carried to her left hand so she could wipe clean a plaque mounted on the wall.

“Hey, I was only half serious when I suggested you comin’ with him would solidify the courtship cover story,” Tavi countered. She surveyed the rest of the crypt chamber they stood in with a careful eye. Two levels down and while they’d found plenty evidence of disturbance--fresh fallen debris, and the like--they hadn’t yet found a likely cause. “I’m honestly kinda surprised you both went for it.” She paused to shove aside a rock that was blocking the doorway they needed. “Happy as I am to see you.”

Charity chuckled. “Nice save.” She held the torch higher as she and Edér followed Tavi down the stairs. “What _is_ this place, anyway?”

“I dunno,” Tavi admitted, tapping her fingers against the hilt of one sabre as they descended the staircase. “Some king thousands of years ago hollowed it all out. I don’t even know how deep it goes; I’ve only been down here once. Helpin’ Kana look for some fuckin’ important book.”

“Oh, yeah, the one the skeleton wizard had,” Edér chimed in. “I felt real bad for him after that.”

“Me, too. Right now I’m hopin’ that whatever’s behind the tremors and shit isn’t any deeper than that so we don’t have to clear out any more levels.”

“So if you’ve cleared everything out,” Charity began, “we’re armed as what, a precaution?”

“Pretty much,” Tavi swatted away cobwebs. “There was everything from xaurips and wurms to adra beetles and ogres in here before. They got in somehow, and if more followed them I wanna be prepared.” 

“Smart,” Charity agreed.

“What I lack in book smarts I make up in common sense,” Tavi joked.

Behind her, Edér coughed. “No comment.”

“Hey!” She wheeled to shoot him a dirty look, which he met with a grin as she almost missed a step. “I will fuckin’ leave you down here, Teylecg.”

He laughed. “But you won’t, ‘cause then you’d hafta explain to Dyrford what you did with their mayor. Winfrith ain’t gonna deputy forever, he was clear on that.”

“Dammit.” He had her there. “Fine. You’re safe.”

“Such a relief,” Edér deadpanned. “I was really worried.”

Tavi rolled her eyes but let him have the last word. She could hear Charity trying (and failing) to muffle how much she was laughing at them, and the occasional chuckle from Edér at how amused Charity was, as they made their way deeper into the Paths. _So far, so good._

-o-

As she’d hoped, they didn’t encounter much of anything the first few levels they passed through, just spiders. Normal sized ones. Focused as she was on leading the way, Tavi still noticed how quiet her companions were being, and sent up a hasty prayer if wasn’t because something was wrong.

By the fifth level down, the amount of rubble they had to skirt or climb over increased dramatically. They’d only just started down the main hallway when one of the tremors shook the walls around them. The door slammed down prematurely, grazing the back of Edér’s shoulder.

He brushed off Tavi’s concern with a smile. “I’ll be fine, Tav. You know I’m tougher’n that, I hope.”

“I do.” She ran one hand through her hair and winked at him. “Just want t’ be sure you’re at your best ‘case we have to fight anything. Maybe let Charity look at it?”

The two of them shared a look. “I don’t think that’s necessary-” Edér started, in tandem with Charity’s “If he says he’s alright-”

Tavi raised an eyebrow. _**Something** happened there, _ she mused, taking in the uneasy set of Edér’s posture and the faint blush coloring Charity’s face. Another tremor, stronger this time, reminded her where her priorities needed to be, and she reluctantly shelved her curiosity. “If you say so. Hopefully we’re gettin’ close, with how strong the tremors are.”

“Seems likely,” Edér nodded, seeming relieved at the change of subject.

There was a small cascade of dust from the ceiling that set all of them coughing. Tavi huffed dust out of her bangs and smiled to herself when Charity reached over to ruffle some free of Edér’s hair as well. So whatever had them blushing and awkward wasn’t _bad_ , just, well, awkward. That was actually promising.

-o-

Six levels down they did have to fight some adra beetles that had crept back in, but they were small and underdeveloped and not much trouble. The biggest challenge was keeping them away from Charity; the beetles weren’t kith who might fall for insulting taunts, they just wanted rid of these intruding pests. Tavi and Edér both wound up physically placing themselves between one of the beetles and their priest. (If Edér did it more than she did, well, Tavi was just going to file that away with no comment.)

“I can take care of myself, y’know,” Charity commented, smashing the last beetle’s head with her mace. “Militia, remember?”

“Sorry,” Tavi laughed. “I know. My previous experience with priests usually involved them stayin’ out of the fray and offerin’ support.”

Charity slid a look at Edér. “And what’s your excuse?” she asked playfully.

Edér shrugged and tweaked the end of her ponytail. “Not used to fightin’  ‘longside a priest, am used to protectin’ people, wanted t’ keep you safe, take your pick.”

Charity grinned. “Wanted to keep me safe, huh?”

He grinned right back. “I make a lousy mayor if I can’t protect my people.”

“You two remember I’m in on the whole fake courtship thing, right?” Tavi piped up with a smirk as she wiped ichor off her armor. “You don’t hafta pretend you’re a couple around me, I know the truth.”

Both of them started, coughed sheepishly, and quickly turned their attention anywhere but each other. _Edér_ was actually blushing, which only made Tavi smirk more as she kicked aside a beetle corpse and started walking toward the next staircase down.

-o-

There was no conversation as they made their way down the stairs. Due to both the perpetual cloud of dust in the air, and Edér and Charity’s not wanting to give her the wrong idea, Tavi was pretty sure. She wasn’t, however, sure it was the wrong idea. She bit her lip to hold bck a smile. Gods, all she’d had to do was suggest the fake courtship and give them the tiniest fucking nudge towards each other. They were doing all the work. The next tremor rumbled in the ground beneath her feet, deep as a war drum, and Tavi would have sworn she could feel it in her chest.

They’d barely reached the bottom of the stairs when they were set upon by a pair of rain blights. Big ones.

_I’ve always hated fighting these things,_ Tavi grumbled to herself, swearing up a blue streak as the three of them teamed up on first one blight, then the other.  “Guess we shoulda turned off the forges, huh?”

“Toldja,” Edér chuckled, raking wet hair out of his eyes. “Too bad Kana ain’t here, he owes me a couple fennings.”

“We get this sorted out with minimal damage or injury, I”ll pay for him,” Tavi snarked.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he said, turning and raising his shield as a wind blight appeared around the corner. Tavi wheeled so she could stand next to him, and could hear Charity quietly murmuring a prayer off to her right. This blight was smaller than the last two, but something about it felt off to her. A few seconds later, when it reached them, she got her reason why.

Rather than lash out with one of the attacks typical of its kind, the wind blight shot out a jet of flame that splashed off Edér’s shield.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Tavi muttered fervently as she dodged forward and around to flank it. A soft but steady glow of conviction settled in her gut, and she flashed Charity a brief, grateful smile as she swung her sabres at the blight’s central mass.

It dissipated with a high-pitched screech that she might have imagined. “Alright, how many fuckin’ souls are trapped down here for the forges to still be going?” she demanded, sheathing her sabres.

“Maybe it’s not how many, but how trapped they are,” Charity said. “If they can’t get away from this floor and it was designed to make blights, maybe the same souls are getting used over and over again.”

“What, the pull of the forge is stronger than the pull of the Wheel?” Tavi winced as she considered it. “Scary thought. So we should shut off all the forges before we kill the blights?”

“Can’t hurt to do it that way,” Charity shrugged. “Worst case it’ll mean there’s no more of that kind coming. Do you know how to turn them off?”

Tavi and Edér both shook their heads. “Why do you think I left ‘em runnin’ last time?” Tavi said sheepishly.

“Well, I’m sure between the three of us we can figure it out.” Charity nodded toward the nearest doorway, a faint green light spilling into the hallway from within.

“Hopefully,” Tavi said with a grunt, and led the way into the room. She was still pretty well baffled by how the fucking thing _worked_ , but it wasn’t like she’d examined them all that closely last time she was down here. Just stuck her head in, didn’t see a clear on/off lever, and decided not to bother. Now she sort of wished she had. This was going to be a pain in the ass.

With a crackling rumble, another tremble shook the ground, definitely sounding and feeling like it originated on this level. Tavi filed that observation away for later, as the trio of huge earth blights waiting in the forge room were a more immediate concern. It was lucky they had Charity with them; while blades didn’t do much against the earth blights, her mace had much better luck. It took some time, but they did clear the room.

“Alright, let’s see what we’re workin’ with here,” Charity murmured, stepping close enough to examine the forge design. In place of the lever Tavi had (sort of) checked for last time, there was a carven pedestal with a pyramid-shaped indentation in the top. “Looks like you have to put some sort of talisman or prism in there to get it to work,” she mused.

“Oh!” Tavi looked at the indentation, shared a glance with Edér, and then bolted down the hallway heading for Gabrannos’ study. “I know where that is!”

“And you _left_ it there?” Charity said incredulously as she and Edér hurried to keep up.

“It didn’t look useful or valuable, an’ we were already carryin’ too much- _Shit_!”

Hovering in the hall between her and her goal waited an enormous wind blight. Like the smaller earlier that had attacked Edér, small bursts of flame shot out randomly from its depths.

“What the fuck is going on?!” Tavi growled, barely waiting  for the other two to catch up before flinging herself at the blight.

This fight went badly. Whether due to its size or something else, the blight was even tougher than most, and with its extra abilities, that added up to doing a lot more damage before they took it down. In the end, Edér retrieved the prism Tavi had been after while Charity did what she could for the minor burns Tavi sustained thanks to being just a hair too slow. It had dredged up some none-too-pleasant memories in the process, and Tavi spent the time fighting the beginnings of a flashback. Said memories were far enough in the past (and she had enough practice) that she did manage, but it still had rattled her.

They returned to the earth blight forge without incident, and Tavi stuck the prism in the pedestal. After one final flare of light, the forge went dark. The blight that had been forming dissipated when only half done.

“Now we just gotta find the rest of those prism,” Tavi said, flexing her fingers.

“Like this one?” Edér asked as he stood from examining a small chest against the wall. In his hand rested a very similar prism, just deep grey instead of rich gren.

“Exactly like that.” Tavi took it from him, careful of her injuries. “Let’s see, there’s earth, wind, flame, and rain blights. This one’s probably-”

“Wind,” Edér interrupted, gesturing at the prism. “It’s got the symbol etched on the bottom.”

“I was fucking getting there,” Tavi grumbled.

“Now you don’t have to,” he said as he stood.

She rolled her eyes and led the way out of the forge room. “Now we just need to find that forge...”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than there was a flash of dull light from ahead and to the right.

“We could start there,” Charity said, voice rife with amusement.

‘There’ proved to be a hole in the wall to the eind blight forge room on the side facing the flame blight forge doorway. Edér hung back at the mouth of the hall to stand guard as Tavi and Charity approached the gap. The air smelled like lightning, the tang of it getting stronger  as they moved closer.

“Wonder what did this,” Charity mused, eyeing the folk-sized hole.

Tavi was about to answer when she felt a low hum in her back teeth. A quick glance confirmed that both the flame and wind blight forges were ramping up, the facing apertures crackling with energy. She didn’t need her gut to tell her this wasn’t going to end well.

“Move!” she hollered instead, all but tackling Charity out of the way as the energy from the two rooms arced to join in a painfully bright beam. It was a close enough call Tavi felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle. The two of them hit the ground and tumbled through a sagging stone doorway, just before it collapsed from the ferocity of the tremor that followed.

Tavi sat up, coughing and waving away dust. “You alright, Charity?”

“Yeah,” Charity groaned. She sat up as well, feeling a small cut on her forehead with careful fingers. “Thanks to you. Good instincts.”

Tavi nodded, just as muffled pounding against the fallen rocks reached them.

“Tavi? Charity?” Edér’s voice was similarly muffled. “If you ain’t dead give me a holler.” Both of them hollered accordingly. “Well, that’s good,” he said, relief clear. “If you ain’t hurt bad we can probably have ya outta there pretty quick.”

Tavi had her doubts--the collapsed wall looked to have settled pretty soundly--but kept it to herself until proven correct. “You’re prob’ly gonna need a prybar.” 

“Where’m I gonna find one of them?”

“Back up in the the armory, ‘less you happened to bring one with you,” Tavi replied, glancing at Charity, who shook her head. She couldn’t blame Edér for sounding irritated; she wasn’t happy with this turn of events either. 

There was a moment’s silence, then, “...Fine. Be back quick as I can.”

“I feel like we should at least see if we can find a way out while we’re waitin’ for him,” Charity commented after a few seconds. “He’ll get us out if he has to tear the wall apart with his bare hands to do it. But if we can keep it from going that far...”

“Sure, sure, good point,” Tavi agreed. “I mean, if one spot on the wall was weak enough to break, why not more?”

“Exactly.” Charity kicked a pebble, watched it ricochet off one of the support pillars.

“Least now we know where those fuckin’ combination blights came from,” Tavi said. She wasn’t keen on the idea of letting silence fall.

“And the tremors,” Charity pointed out as she tested one of the walls. “They came from the sheer force of two forges working together to make a blight.” 

“But it didn’t make a blight.” The fact dawned on Tavi in the same moment she said it. “Does it not always make blights? If it had this time we would heard Edér fightin’ it ‘fore he checked on us.” She hesitated briefly before deciding the segue was as good as any. “How’s it goin’ for you two, anyway? Y’know, with the fake courtship.”

Charity fumbled the small chest she’d picked up, almost dropping the blue glass prism from inside it. “Fine. We’re... fine. Look what I found.” She held up the prism.

Tavi nodded, then raised an eyebrow. “And you don’t expect me to pry after that?  I won’t breathe a word to anyone. Including Edér.”

“It’s... getting complicated,” Charity admitted. Her fingers played with her necklace and her eyes roamed the wall rather than meet Tavi’s. “With us being friends... there’s a real fine line between pretend courting and real couritng an’ I think maybe we’re... losin’ sight of it.”

“How come?” Hylea save her, Tavi tried to hide her eagerness as she asked. Wasn’t sure she did a good job.

“Just... little things,” Charity hedged, sliding down the wall to a seated position and playing with the blue glass prism. “We spend a lot of time together; more than we strictly need to. I picked up knitting as a hobby this winter, so I wouldn’t go stir crazy, and everything I’ve made so far wound up bein’ for him. Scarf, hat, hand warmers... And he _wore them_ , Tavi. _In public_. I’m still a novice, so they weren’t exactly pretty and he _wore them_.” She paused, cleared her throat (somehow missed the grin Tavi was fighting). “Remember how you told me when his birthday is? I, um... my neighbors’ dog had puppies and I gave Edér one.”

Tavi stopped fighting the grin. “Sounds like a good present for him.”

“He...” Charity hesitated, face flaming to match her hair. “He kissed me.”

Tavi nearly swallowed her tongue. _Fuck. Yes_.

“And not one of those forehead or cheek kisses we’d been doin’ to help with the courtship facade, an actual honest to Eothas kiss. O-Only for a second, and he apologized for doing it, but the thing is...” She bit her lip. “He didn’t need to. Apologize, I mean. I-I didn’t mind it.”

“What do you think that means?” Tavi asked, trying desperately to keep her voice neutral.

“I don’t know,” Charity admitted after a hefty pause. “We’ve been... a little bit off since, which I”m sure you noticed. We need to talk about it, but I have no fucking clue what I would say.”

“Well,” Tavi began, only to be cut off by the scrape of metal against rock from the cave in.

“Found one!” Edér’s voice filtered through the stone. “Next floor up, in one of the crates we didn’t clean out first time through.”

“Great,” Tavi called back, even if her internal monologue was more _Dammit_ than gratitude.

With the help of the prybar, Edér had made a big enough hole for them to crawl through in just a few minutes. He helped Charity and Tavi through, winced a little and rolled his shoulder, but brushed off Tavi’s renewed concern. “It’ll be fine.”

It was. And the rest of the forges were shut down without incident or shenanigans beyond the few extra minutes it took to find the flame prism-key. Sure there were still blights to fight, but the rain ones were far fewer in number than the others. Probably due to that forge being set away from the others and thus catching fewer souls.

Much to Tavi’s relief, after they shut down the wind blight forge, thus ending its ability to team up with the flame blight one, there were no more tremors. They wouldn’t have to go deeper. With her and Edér both hurt--if only a little--and all three of them exhausted, that was a very good thing.

After confirming all the forges were shut down and blights destroyed, the souls  trapped in them hopefully returned to the Wheel, they made their way back to the surface. It took awhile; even directly and at full energy the stairs took over an hour to climb. Tired as they were, they stopped to rest several times, pushing their travel closer to two and a half.

“Charity, if I could steal you for a minute to take care of my arm proper?” Tavi hinted as they stumbled their way into Brighthollow. “Just real quick b’fore we all collapse from fuckin’ exhaustion?”

Charity nodded, taking the hint--”Sure”--and the two of them retreated to Tavi’s room as Edér headed for his former quarters, mumbling something about sleeping til his feet weren’t sore any more.

“Getting back to our topic from earlier,” Tavi began, sitting down and extending her singed arm for Charity to properly patch up. “I do think you should talk to him. Even if you aren’t completely sure of _everything_ you want to say. If you know the basics, that’s enough for a start.”

“And if I’m not sure of even the basics?” Charity asked wryly, unwinding the old bandages.

“Figure those out first,” Tavi conceded. “I don’t want either of you gettin’ hurt.”

“That might be inevitable,” Charity muttered as she reached for soothing salve and new bandages, so quietly Tavi decided not to pursue it, before adding, “I do appreciate how much you care, and the advice you’re willing to offer, but I just don’t know-”

“Charity, lemme give you some advice,” Tavi cut her off, having an idea where she was going. “Speakin’ from experience here, there’s another fine line you need to worry about, aside form the one between real and pretend courtship. That’s the one between reasonable caution and cowardice. Shit, it took months and several times almost fuckin’ _ **dying**_ for me to tell Aloth how I felt about him. If you think you’re really fallin’ for Edér, fuckin’ tell him. If you aren’t and the courtship thing is getting awkward for you, tell him that, too. All the time I’ve known him, I think the only thing he appreciates more than honesty is animals.” She flinched slightly as Charity tied off the new bandages. “Just my two pands.”

Charity nodded tiredly. “I’ll keep that in mind. Right now, I need sleep before I make any kind of big decision.”

“That’s fair,” Tavi said. “Shit, you don’t hafta do anything til you two are back in Dyrford. Just think about it.” 

“I will,” Charity promised. She stood, collected the used supplies, and left the room.

Tavi barely managed to stay awake long enough to shuck her armor and send up a brief prayer her friends would stop being idiots before flopping in bed and falling asleep.


End file.
